Q5 Goals

If you are living within your means, Giiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirl! …. you haven’t lived.

This is an absolute diversion on the road I’m cruising, yet a newfound teacher rejigged my world view and got me thinking…

I’m mulling over this as I head home in minimal traffic - that my dreams need to be grander, that I need to throw away the perfect cube box and create a quantum physics interstellar-like tesseract box. That I need to be a wide-eyed dreamer despite the bullets coming my way intent on bringing down the stars I’m shooting for.

While castle-building, a creamy gold second-gen Audi Q5 overtakes me swiftly, like a perfect gent, cruising the lone highway like a fine damsel. Nairobi drivers for sure need to pick a leaf.

My dad has been in the business of cars for eons. Growing up I worked in his little auto-spares shop during school holidays selling filters, plugs, elements, shocks, fan-belts et al. By default, I’m a speed-cat. I kinda-sorta like the Q7 and the 5 is an old-new discovery. Not bad. In my dreams, which we’re moving closer, I own a classy four wheel and this right here is it.

Turns out, me and the Q5 are headed the same direction. We stop briefly at a mall I pass through heading home to avoid some 35 bumps. At the security check the Q5 is ahead and I feast my eyes on its slaying features, the body work, the perfect figure, great set of wheels. I slow whistle.

A laid back couple possibly in their early 40s are riding front, I can hear soft rock music seeping from their car speakers. Their four kids seated at the back causing mayhem. I smile goofily at the one girl whose head is at the rear windshield looking at me, she makes zombie faces and I pull my tongue at her…that whole scene is #Goals

The security guard is almost done with the Q5, he does one final sweep of the nicely curved boot. He opens it and voila! in there are four other kids curled up like little puppies, the guard bursts into laughter as does myself and the other onlookers. Eight in this millenial era! that’s one helluva feat.

That small four-aside football team should be shipped to shags and spend time with grandma, imagine how many loafs of bread they topple every week? At least with grandma they can have arrowroots, cassava and sweet potatoes.

…shags is not just a place upcountry, it’s the people, it’s a feeling. It brings back memories of my late grandma and namesake Joan Mwihaki. I remember when we landed in Miiri a small tea growing village, home of a thousand macadamia trees. We’d go straight to cucu’s backyard and find the passion fruit vines that were weaved across the entire farm, making for an interesting fence.

That was almost 15 years ago, I was a little shorter but taller than my kid brother and we’d try reach for the fruits for over an hour. We’d then go to grandma’s kitchen with our spoil, mine was like ten fruits and Cucu would request that I share the spoil. I’d give her half.

Goals are such, you are forever reaching, the joy is in the jumping up and down, it’s in sharing the bounty. The vines have an endless supply of fruit, you just have to get out there every morning. The catch is not always full of sweet fruits, some are bitter - sweet. Such is life. Yet with time you grow taller and you can catch low hanging fruits and increase the chances for sweeter fruit. Then, you discover they’re avocado trees in the neighbour’s farm and they are much higher up and you have acrophobia. It’s time to conquer fear and climb the trees!

… after the Q5 sequence, I get home and I’m convinced I just had a déjà vu moment, maybe I should move houses. I imagine myself scouting for houses in the estate just across mine which is paved upto the door, where water rationing is unheard of, albeit rent is double. I see myself having a tilled balcony fitted with space enough for those beach-like umbrellas where I can write in the rain.

At my door, there is a card peeping out. Snobby neighbour finally grew some and went back to the 90s and wrote me a poem on a Christmas card? I open the door to retrieve the card. I flip it, My landlord! For the first time in the five years sends me a seasons’ greetings card. Sweet, I might not move, yet.

2017 has been that year. God has been winking.

That said, I’m going to push this envelope in 2018; from writing goals, filmmaking goals, technicolour friendships, authentic family time and “kids in the boot” kinda goals.